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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

What are the distinguishing components of the debate on “The Eighteenth Century”?

  • UPSC 2008
  • The Eighteenth Century

Unlike a question asking for a personal characterisation, this one asks for the architecture of the historiographical debate itself — the distinct positions historians have staked out in explaining eighteenth-century India, and the fault lines that separate them.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • Component One: The "Dark Age" Thesis versus the Continuity/Revisionist Thesis
  • Component Two: Empire-Centric versus Region-Centric Approaches to Decline
  • Component Three: Economic Stagnation versus Regional Prosperity
  • Component Four: Internal Collapse versus External Conquest

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